We have changed the way reading looks in Tremendous Tahi - We have moved away from group teaching and now use the CSI programme. This works with whole class, cooperative learning groups, working in pairs and individual work. It involves direct teaching of reading strategies through various genres - Maths literacy, English, Social Sciences and Science Lliteracy. The reading strategies are:
Asking Questions
Determining main ideas
Drawing inferences
Visualizing
Synthesizing information
Monitoring comprehension and repairing understanding
Making connections
CSI is founded on evidence-based principles that are known to increase student achievement, so that:
All students, no matter what their independent reading level, learn comprehension strategies and improve their literacy achievement using short, grade-level texts, teacher scaffolding, peer interaction, and audio/visual support.
All students learn comprehension strategies by experiencing new concepts more than three times over a short period, through modeling and think aloud, interaction, reflection, and application of concepts. For this purpose,CSI is highly interactive.
All students are engaged by interesting, relevant, and authentic texts and tasks across four content areas and are encouraged to be increasingly responsible for their progress as they learn the literacy strategies vital for their success.
To follow is a quick video to show the interactive texts used with CSI.
Writing
In writing we have been looking at recounts. Here are a couple of legends retold by students in our class.
The Creation - By Chalice
Ranginui the sky father and Papatuanuku mother earth, loved each other dearly. So much so that they held each other until no light could see the universe. Each of the children lay in the cold, dead cores of their parents stomachs.
These children of Rangi and Papa became frustrated. They were feed up of dwelling in absolutely no light.
The children planned to separate the parents to create a better world. So they heaved and pushed until their parents grasp was broken. They both grieved in sorrow and longed to be together again.
Each of the children became gods of their very own important roles that makeup our world.Tangaroa became the god of the sea, Tawhiri-matea became the god of weather, and Tane Mahuta became the god of all the trees and forests. You can see the descendants even now, they make our world special.
The Creation by Callum Hollin Dark mists swirl about the world in darkness. The sky father Ranginui and earth mother Papatuanuku were too close together.
The children of Ranginui and Papatuanuku were getting frustrated because Ranginui and Papatuanuku were so close together that no light was getting in and things could not grow.
So one fateful day they decided to push their Sky Father and Earth Mother apart so light could get in. They pushed and they heaved and slowly but surely light began to enter the realm.
The children flourished and turned into gods of the earth. There was Tane, god of forests and birds and Tawhirimatea, god of the winds and weather.There was Tumatauenga, god of war and there was Tangaroa, god of the sea.There was also Rongo, god of peace and Huamiatiketike, god of wild foods and plants. Rehua was a star and Ruaomoko was the source of earthquakes.
With the sunlight lighting up the land the gods had children and those were the birds and plants and animals. So that is the legend of the creation and how the children pushed their mother and father apart.
Both students pushed their comfort zones and presented their effort to the school, with clarity and excellent pronunciation!!! Well done - be proud of your efforts. Mr Wagener has been working on using quality adjectives in our writing to describe with detail. Keep checking out the wiki for more updates to come.
Spelling.....
Here are a couple of sites that you could go to and have fun with words..........
http://www.spellingbeethegame.com/ Just like an American spelling bee competition - some very challenging words - increases you vocabulary knowledge too!
You can always increase your vocabulary knowledge (and other areas) and help those less fortunate than yourself.
Our focus in writing is 'to describe'. At the moment we are working on character descriptions, to follow is a great page that give you lots of ideas on how to describe your character - check it out!!!
We have used storybird to create these amazing books.
Click on the link to check out some creative work.
This one is the trial that we created during our tutorial.
http://storybird.com/books/monsters-and-friends-2/?token=v3t2j7
HERE ARE SOME OF THE FIRST EFFORTS FROM OUR STUDENTS.
monster creeps. by paulest on Storybirdpan style="color:#666666;">on StorybirdThe awesome animals. by jasminepope123 on StorybirdWelcome to a page that shares all things about literacy.
Reading
CSI - Comprehension Strategy Instruction
We have changed the way reading looks in Tremendous Tahi - We have moved away from group teaching and now use the CSI programme. This works with whole class, cooperative learning groups, working in pairs and individual work. It involves direct teaching of reading strategies through various genres - Maths literacy, English, Social Sciences and Science Lliteracy. The reading strategies are:CSI is founded on evidence-based principles that are known to increase student achievement, so that:
To follow is a quick video to show the interactive texts used with CSI.
Writing
In writing we have been looking at recounts. Here are a couple of legends retold by students in our class.
The Creation - By Chalice
Ranginui the sky father and Papatuanuku mother earth, loved each other dearly. So much so that they held each other until no light could see the universe. Each of the children lay in the cold, dead cores of their parents stomachs.
These children of Rangi and Papa became frustrated. They were feed up of dwelling in absolutely no light.
The children planned to separate the parents to create a better world. So they heaved and pushed until their parents grasp was broken. They both grieved in sorrow and longed to be together again.
Each of the children became gods of their very own important roles that makeup our world.Tangaroa became the god of the sea, Tawhiri-matea became the god of weather, and Tane Mahuta became the god of all the trees and forests. You can see the descendants even now, they make our world special.
The Creation by Callum Hollin
Dark mists swirl about the world in darkness. The sky father Ranginui and earth mother Papatuanuku were too close together.
The children of Ranginui and Papatuanuku were getting frustrated because Ranginui and Papatuanuku were so close together that no light was getting in and things could not grow.
So one fateful day they decided to push their Sky Father and Earth Mother apart so light could get in. They pushed and they heaved and slowly but surely light began to enter the realm.
The children flourished and turned into gods of the earth. There was Tane, god of forests and birds and Tawhirimatea, god of the winds and weather.There was Tumatauenga, god of war and there was Tangaroa, god of the sea.There was also Rongo, god of peace and Huamiatiketike, god of wild foods and plants. Rehua was a star and Ruaomoko was the source of earthquakes.
With the sunlight lighting up the land the gods had children and those were the birds and plants and animals. So that is the legend of the creation and how the children pushed their mother and father apart.
Both students pushed their comfort zones and presented their effort to the school, with clarity and excellent pronunciation!!! Well done - be proud of your efforts.
Mr Wagener has been working on using quality adjectives in our writing to describe with detail. Keep checking out the wiki for more updates to come.
Spelling.....
Here are a couple of sites that you could go to and have fun with words..........
http://www.spellingcity.com/
http://www.funbrain.com/spell/
http://www.spellingbeethegame.com/ Just like an American spelling bee competition - some very challenging words - increases you vocabulary knowledge too!
You can always increase your vocabulary knowledge (and other areas) and help those less fortunate than yourself.
www.freerice.com
Character descriptions -
Our focus in writing is 'to describe'. At the moment we are working on character descriptions, to follow is a great page that give you lots of ideas on how to describe your character - check it out!!!
http://www.wordpool.co.uk/wfc/info/characterdescription.htm